Product Leader We Admire: David Evans

We frequently like to profile Product Leaders we admire, to help inspire you and your team. This month, we are excited to introduce you to?David Evans.?

David Evans has served as Chief Product Officer at Collage Group for the past four years.

David has significant leadership experience with top employers, including CoStar Group, The White House, and Corporate Executive Board (now Gartner). He has functional leadership experience across a wide variety of situations—start-ups, new function creation, strategy shifts, cost reduction, new business unit launches, restructuring, relocations, turnarounds, etc. David is intensely analytical, detail-driven, and willing to get his hands dirty to innovate, drive change and commercialize the product. He is motivated by the collaboration needed to deliver better results.

We have gotten the great pleasure and opportunity to get to know David in our Product Leader Peer Group.

Here's a bit more about David:

Favorite?product?book:

"Marty Cagan’s Inspired.?This book really opened my mind about the concept of the Roadmap. I was always struggling with the expression of roadmaps as basically some form of Gantt chart or swimlane diagram.??Cagan’s approach reframes the roadmap as a funnel process converting high uncertainty projects into projects you can and should do, and will be paid for. Indeed, roadmap may be the wrong word!"

Professional mantra or guiding principle:

"Never give up control of your core IP unless you intend to fully exit the business.?I heard this from an in-law, a very successful entrepreneur, who was giving advice to my brother-in-law.?This was his absolute mantra for navigating through the many challenges of starting a company and struggling with cash flow."

Best career advice you ever received:

"This is boring but utterly critical.?Don’t ever put your career before your closest relationships – family, spouse, and?children.?I am fantastically blessed in this area personally, and about to celebrate 30 years of marriage, but have seen even the most talented and focused of people nearly destroyed by the eventual consequences of getting this priority backward."

Favorite?product?launch you have been part of:

"The one now!?Taking our Cultural Intelligence platform to the next level by incorporating brand rankings and data science to help top brands win the culturally diverse consumer segments critical to growth – segments that are redefining the American consumer."???